* * * * *

Poor Giuliano's corpse was left weltering in his blood, where he had
been done to death, outside the choir screen of the Duomo. At length he
was picked up tenderly by the good _Misericordia_. His terrible wounds
were reverently washed and his godlike body prepared for sepulture. News
of his assassination had been swiftly carried out to Careggi, and Domina
Lucrezia, bracing herself for the afflicting sight, hastened to lay his
fair head in her lap, a very real replica of "_La Pietà_"--Blessed Mary
and her Son.

Ah! how she and the women who bore her company wept for the beloved
dead. Ah! how with tender fingers they counted each gaping wound. Ah!
how gently they cut off locks of his rich hair, as memorials of a sweet
young life.

They buried Giuliano that same evening, with all the honours due to his
rank, amid the tears of an immense concourse of people--stayed for a
while from their savage man-hunt. To the Medici shrine of San Lorenzo
they bore him--the yellow light of the wax candles revealing the tombs
of Cosimo and Piero.

"There was not a citizen," says Macchiavelli, "who, armed or unarmed,
did not go to the palace of Lorenzo in this time of trouble, to offer
him his person and his property--such was the position and the affection
that the Medici had acquired by their prudence and their liberality."

Lorenzo came out on the loggia, and addressed the people massed in the
street. He thanked them for their devotion and assistance, but entreated
them, for his dear, dead brother's sake, to abstain from further